Nora Szirmai

For the third time in the series of annual National Salons organized by the Kunsthalle, the exhibition presents the most important endeavors and works of Hungarian fine arts from the past five years, both within Hungary and beyond its borders.

The title of the exhibition is a term borrowed from the world of cryptography, referring to a virtual object that is assigned a unique digital identifier, but the term also captures something of the essence of fine art in its own modern and ingenious way.

Is it an exaggeration to say that the material world, pushed into virtuality—with the ingenuity of the human mind in the background—functions as living matter in its elusive entirety? As a glowing, sizzling, undulating consciousness that, protecting itself, reflects with elemental force on the questions of physical reality and human culture nourished by its traditions. Matter? Reality beyond matter? Tradition? The medieval theologian Duns Scotus' concept of virtuality? Traditional forms of art? Artistic freedom created with digital tools? Self-identity? Virtual identity? And while we're at it: the unlimited reproducibility of digital works versus the irreproducibility of materialized artistic objects?

Non-fungible token. An irreplaceable object.

If we look back at the term from the digital present, not only in its current context but also in its traditional meaning, it becomes bizarrely valid for the entire field of fine arts. The ingenuity of its virtual metamorphosis in the present captures something of the essence of art before and after digitization.

The spectacular change in contemporary art over the past five years is that even its traditionally created forms can no longer escape the increasingly powerful influences of the fast-paced digital cosmos. The exhibition seeks to map the wealth of personal reflections on social shifts and, with it, the infiltration of the virtual world currently taking shape into traditional artistic thinking. Whether this manifests itself in formal and/or content-related elements is up to the artistic subject. The exhibition seeks to explore a worldview that reflects our times, in which there is room for both the need to rethink traditions and the so-called digital thinking that works in the background of the material world's objectified works.

The main curator of the exhibition is József Baksai, and the co-curator is György Verebes.
Artistic advisor: Katalin Kállai

Műcsarnok - an institution of the Hungarian Academy of Arts
Address:: H-1146 Budapest, Dózsa György út 37.
Open: May 23 - September 28, 2025.

Source: mucsarnok.hu